[SamDiablo]

Hi All,

Came across this article on bbc. It brings a totally different perspective on how road accidents are seen and what authorities can and should do to minimise casualties in road accidents.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...g-on-its-roads

The car smashed into a concrete structure supporting a streetlight by the side of the road, and all five passengers were killed.
...
Tingvall did indeed believe that the authorities were responsible – not for reckless driving, or for the crash itself – but for the fact that the incident was as fatal as it was. And within a couple of years, Swedish parliamentarians would align themselves with this way of viewing road safety.
...
...
...

On 22 May 1997, the Swedish government presented Bill 1996/97:137 to parliament. It cemented zero deaths as a long-term goal for road fatalities. It reiterated that transport designers were responsible for maintaining the road system, while drivers were expected to drive responsibly and follow the rules. However, a further clause stated that:

"If the road users do not adequately assume their share of the responsibility, for example, due to a lack of knowledge or skill, or if personal injuries occur or risk occurring for other reasons, the system designers must take additional further measures to prevent people being killed or seriously injured."

This meant that officials were no longer allowed to design roads for idealised drivers who never became distracted or exceeded the speed limit. They had to make roads for real people who made mistakes.

As Tingvall puts it: "It should be up to the professional community to make sure that that normal people, doing normal mistakes, don't lead to them killing themselves or someone else."

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by SamDiablo

a totally different perspective on how road accidents are seen and what authorities can and should do to minimise casualties in road accidents.

Fascinating! Thank you very much.

I firmly believe that the driver is responsible. Many others have pointed out that poor infrastructure "causes" accidents. This shows a new approach, that could be interpreted as, yes, the driver is responsible, but what is the outcome of the driver's mistake?

It won't catch on in my mother country (UK), which has been dead set on over-engineering road design to inconvenience the driver, and/or heavy restriction on the presence of cars at all.

As to my home country... I don't need to tell anyone here anything about it!

[Aditya]

Road traffic fatalities | Sweden's successful "systems approach" - Posts moved to a new thread.

[electric_eel]

Originally Posted by SamDiablo

Hi All,

Came across this article on bbc. It brings a totally different perspective on how road accidents are seen and what authorities can and should do to minimise casualties in road accidents.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...g-on-its-roads

Fantastic article. Needs time to think about and reflect. Meanwhile here is the website

https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/...s-vision-zero/

[alpha1]

All relevant points in the website, thanks to Claes Tingvall; accidents will happen (driver errors) but how do we make stuff less hazardous to human beings being involved.


I actually think one of the most relevant paragraph for TBHP folks would be:

But Tingvall expresses regret that speed limits are still subject to political and public debate, rather than being set by experts who understand the risk that different road systems pose to the human body. "No one would dream of letting the Parliament set the speed limits for trains, or maximum load weights for bridges, since they are technical limits," he wrote in 2022. "Regardless of how hard it may sound, democracy does not stand above physical laws."

[Mystic]

My take on this in 2024 to find a solution to zero deaths with man, machine and road being the 3 variables for a fatality to happen. I have studied civil engineering 40+ years back and we studied all about roads and their design. I think the fundamentals are same even now and nothing revolutionary happened in this subject. Even rubber roads existed 60 years back. Coming to the other 2 variables of machine and man, nothing much changed with respect to number of fatalities due to advances in the safety precautions in automobiles and making driving license tests harder to get by various tests for drivers. Fatalities are only increasing.

The only revolution that happened and our generation is witnessing is Artificial Intelligence.

The fatalities can be made to zero only by advances through ADAS / AI / autonomous cars made mandatory in the world. The physical driver in the driving seat has no part in the eventuality of a fatal crash. The technology of ADAS should be so advanced that it is fed information live from satellites about any traffic jams, unforeseen natural calamities, the vehicle road worthiness or condition of the machine in real time. A sensible decision is taken online by ADAS to keep the passengers safe always. There is no overriding of ADAS by driver and the engine is shut down if the human driver is trying to be over smart. Even the road design aspects of some flaws and detection of pot holes created are considered and prompt precautions are taken when roads become dangerous due to unforeseen circumstances.

[RGK]

Slight OT here:

Sierre coach crash occurred on 13 March 2012 near Sierre, Switzerland, when a coach carrying school teachers and pupils crashed into a wall (veered and hit a curb, then collided with a concrete wall head-on, at the end of an emergency turnout area) in the A9 Sierre Tunnel. An investigation was done about the design of the tunnel. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Some believe that the SOS bay was inadequately lit, lacked reflectors, and had poor air flow in the tunnel.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To prevent accidents effectively, it is important to recognize that drivers are not solely responsible for the cause. Implementing technology in prevention efforts is a positive step forward.

[ringsoftime]

Although I am not familiar with this particular bill, I have been curious about the Scandinavian approach to safety. People make mistakes, and sometimes some part of the innumerable nuts and bolts may give up. Maybe the ambition outweighed the skill. But people don't deserve to pay for those with their or a passengers death.

One day I was literally astonished to see that in my Municipal town, it was decided that to control the traffic, huge concrete blocks were used to make a dividing wall. With no warning, nothing to ease the coalition and absolutely no reflectors. The day after a vehicle crashed on to it. I asked about this to someone politically connected to ruling coalition and shared my concern. The reply was that only those who want to go faster than the others would hit it. A few days after some bits and pieces of reflecting stickers were pasted on it. It is genuinely appalling to see the attitude that, they made a mistake so they can perish.

I hope some of these come to our policy makers and we do something about it. It is even possible that our safety guidelines do have some of these measures, but are not given the importance it demands.

[krrisdrive]

The article is overwhelming from Indian POV and gives completely different perspective to view the problem. So many takeaways and all are in dire need.

However, I think this below section could be the starting point.

The real moment of change, he believes, came some months before the crash south of Stockholm, when a conversation took place in his office. It was during a visit from Ines Uusmann, the minister for infrastructure, and Tingvall's political boss. At one point she turned to him and asked, simply: "How many deaths should we have as our long-term target in Sweden?"

Tingvall replied: "Zero." To his surprise, Uusmann said she was interested and would like to hear more. This was the beginning of an approach to road safety known as "Vision Zero".

Here are two powerful people, the elected and executive, who made maximum impact with their simple discussion.

I genuinely believe, we do have such personas at all parties and in executive cadre. After all, someone in powerful position asked "How long our children need to suffer due to Polio?" and we know rest is history.

Hope Pune Porsche accident may trigger a politician or an administrator to say "Enough! Let us overhaul the system".

[Akilan902]

Great article, in years past I too was in the camp of the "buck stops with driver" / "bad drivers deserve it coming" camp.

But then I discovered Air Crash Investigation TV show where even if it was clearly pilot error, the investigation did not stop at that simple answer but looked further into what caused the pilot to behave in that manner/what systems could be put in place to avoid such an incident again.

I didn't have enough imagination to consider that similar approach could be applied to road accidents.

IMHO the things that would have the most impact in our Indian roads, in order of most impact to the least:

1. Better driver education and safety awareness
2. Better infrastructure and well thought out road designs
3. Safer Cars

Just making all cars 5 star without points 1 and 2 would make only a tiny impact on overall numbers of loss of lives in our roads (my humble opinion).

By rough math based on kinetic energy being proportional to speed squared, with crash tests conducted at 64km/h - a crash at 90.5 km/h would have twice the energy and a crash at 128km/h would have !!4 times!! the energy.

Not to mention millions of our Lorries with flimsy or no underride bars which bypasses most safety features of a car.

[PradoGdr88]

Apple to Apple comparison would be better in such cases. In the above mentioned countries weather also plays a major role. More than 50% of insurance claims during winter are due to skidding of the road, poor visibility you get the chime. Though they have narrow roads the amount of population per square kilometer will be way less.

Now does this mean we can have unscientifically placed dividers, unmarked speed breakers and traffic calming measures with no reflectors (Police Barricades I am looking at you) and building highways through a town without any underpass. Air Conditioned cabins for truck drivers like other members said it just fizzed out to name a few. NOPE!

But in a country as vibrant as ours the sole responsibility of being safe resides with the driver because the amount of factors which can't be controlled are humungous. My realistic take is that we are improving as a nation (both Drivers and Infrastructure) but we have a long way to go.